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Starting From Home Challenge 2009 Overview
The Starting From Home Challenge has been created by Heyoka Solutions, LLC and Affordable Comfort, Inc., a non-profit 501 (c) (3) organization. It is an annual, post secondary school based competition in which student teams compete to produce deep energy reductions (70% to 90%) on real homes in real neighborhoods with real occupants. The Challenge is fashioned after the biannual Solar Decathlon, the US Department of Energy’s educational competition dealing with innovation in energy delivery in new construction. The Starting From Home Challenge embraces existing homes, most having been built years ago, homes that are constantly consuming energy and causing the inhabitants discomfort both physical and financial and affecting the environment as a whole.
The 11 individual competitive challenges are based on three fundamental principals and goals:
- Reduction of the energy loads of existing homes.
- Education of the participants and the homeowners. The occupants need to understand and appreciate the systems nature of the structures they live in. The students involved will learn and question and challenge the program and its fundamentals to grow and develop. Their knowledge and their discoveries will spread beyond the Challenge for years to come.
- Promotion of the concepts. The concepts engendered by this effort will be promoted beyond the boundaries of the Challenge and its participants.
To accomplish these lofty goals teams from a select number of schools across the country will be partnered with building science professionals to undertake the analysis and evaluation of energy savings alterations that need to be performed on homes in their local communities. Home selection itself is part of the Challenge by ensuring the team members fully understand the real world impact by enlisting the homeowner as an integral part of the team. The reduced energy loads will have a direct impact on the locality of each house and that impact will grow as teams are added in subsequent years and more and more existing structures are included in the Challenge.
Each year judging will take place at the National Affordable Comfort Conference based on competitive sub-challenges, describing each team’s documentation of all interaction with the homeowner and home in a formal presentation at the conference. The projected growth of the event forecasts an increased number of teams participating in subsequent years sparking the addition of a regional level of competition, culminating with an added final round consisting of a live retrofit occurring at the National Affordable Comfort Conference. The formal announcement of the first Starting From Home Challenge will take place in Pittsburgh, PA in April, 2008 opening the first year of strategic, local retrofits with judging taking place at Kansas City in April, 2009.
Challenging the participants – tomorrow’s workforce and leaders – with the task of stretching their minds to generate creative ways to reduce carbon emissions, create our country’s independence from foreign sources of fuel, and fully utilize the lives of existing structures is the ultimate homeland security. For more information on the Starting From Home Challenge or to find out how you can help with this exciting project, please contact us at Heyoka Solutions paul@heysol.com .
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